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Genesis says the heavenly lights, including the moon, were made to determine patterns and seasons. Jubilees, by contrast, insists on a solar calendar and excludes the moon from marking time, competing with the lunar calendar in early Rabbinic tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 1:14
Hebrew Bible
12 The land produced vegetation—plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening, and there was morning, a third day. 14 God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons and days and years, 15 and let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” It was so.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jubilees 2:9
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
8 And on the fourth day He created the sun and the moon and the stars, and set them in the vault of the sky, to give light on all the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and divide the light from the darkness. 9 And God appointed the sun to be a great sign on the earth for days and for sabbaths and for months and for feasts and for years and for sabbaths of years and for jubilees and for all seasons of the years. 10 And it divides the light from the darkness [and] for prosperity, so that everything that sprouts and grows may flourish on the earth. These three kinds He made on the fourth day.
Date: 170–125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Genesis had said that God created the sun and the moon “to serve as signs for the set times, the days and the years” (Genesis 1:14). But this potentially implied that the moon had some role in establishing when festivals would occur, as well as in determining the length of the year. Both Jubilees’ original author and the Interpolator endorsed a calendar in which the moon had no role: a “month” was simply an arbitrary 30-day unit entirely independent of the phases of the moon. (The Interpolator further specifies that the official year contains exactly 364 days—it is not clear what the original author thought) So Jubilees’ author here is at pains to stress that Genesis 1:14 was actually intended to say that the sun alone would determine the “months, festivals, years” ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 31.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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